Eric Mangini walked off Soldier Field like a weary pall bearer, head down, eyes fixed on his bootlaces ... like most coaches move when they get cracked 30-to-6 ... or 55-10, or 73-zip. A Bears team not that much better than his had done the damage.

Last January he took over a Cleveland club with major gaps in its talent pool, but the players on hand now are still pros, and when you flop it over five times (three fumbles, two interceptions) like the Browns did last Sunday, maybe it seems more of an issue of concentration ... and coaching points. For the season, Cleve's giveaway total is 23 - worst in the land.

One year in Dallas, coach Jimmy Johnson axed his top backup RB right in the locker room after he lost the ball - twice - in a meaningless game. Dallas had already cinched up its playoff spot, which made it an even more drastic display. But that's one way of fixing the dropsies ... and rifling off a heavy message to the troops.

Had Mangini gone drastic in Chicago, he'd have cut Steve Heiden and Mohamed Massaquoi ... and a very shaky quarterback, Derek Anderson. The Browns recovered the spill by Josh Cribbs, and Cribbs is their top action guy, and you figure he'd be spared from the blade, but hell, if you're really going for the nuclear deterrent ...

Instead, Sunday's culprits are still in the lineup, so around bleary-eyed Brownstown the question remains: how do you fix fumbling? Afterward, Mangini offered the clinical solution.

"There are ways that you hold onto the football, very specific points of pressure that you have to put onto the ball," he said. "There's an awareness of the incoming defender, and making sure you have it secure before you start to run. It starts with awareness."

"It's technique," says Cribbs. "But then again it seems like every fumble we've had is when a guy is trying to get extra yards or make a play. Everyone feels like they need to make a play. I've done it, several other guys have done it, but that's because we feel we've got to go above and beyond our responsibility - the call of duty.  

"That's where you can get into trouble, making athletic moves. You see a guy go out and make a juke, you see a guy trying to scratch for more yards - that's when the ball gets loose, and you got all these guys around trying to take it from you. We have to get out of that habit."

"You know my career," says tailback Jamal Lewis. "I've had a whole lot of fumbles. Over the years I ran reckless, and you can make a lot more plays running like that, but at the same time keeping it high and tight is how you eliminate them.

"But if you're concentrating on [holding] the football too much, instead of where you gotta go and what you gotta do, it takes away from your instincts. So you work on it in practice until it becomes first nature."

The drop that tilted the game for good came in the third quarter, with Cleveland hanging around at 16-6 and the ball at midfield. That was the Heiden bobble, and the Bears fell on that one then charged in for another touchdown.

"Yeah, that was the biggie," said Heiden, the 11th-year tight end. "The backbreaker. They brought a blitz and it was a hot route. Me and Derek knew it was coming, so I peeked at him and he threw it and I knew right away it was a first down.

"But then you get wrapped up, and those guys do a good job stripping the ball, especially [safety Danieal] Manning. And he got me."

The club records for fumbling are kept on ancient scrolls, the heavy spillage of the 1978 season - 29 lost, 50 total.
That was a Sam Rutigliano team, his first year as Cleveland coach, and it was palms and knuckles all around him. Too careless with the merchandise, boys. But within two years, things Sam had straightened things out and his greasy hands gang was in the playoffs.

"I remember Woody Hayes saying that fumbling was an act of God - a Goddamned fool," says Rutigliano. "But with fumblers there is typically a lack of concentration behind it, losing focus on protecting the ball. I think they're all fixable. The great running backs, they never quit and they're being ripped from the front and behind and the sides and sometimes the ball gets exposed.

"My first year in Cleveland the problem guy I had was Mike Pruitt, a big kid from Purdue, a No. 1 draft choice.  With Mike it was a matter of concentration, working on it, and then encouraging him to believe in himself and protect the ball. To me, encouragement is the oxygen of the soul. So you keep giving it. Eventually he worked himself into the Pro Bowl."

But those old Brownies could throw the ball all over the park ... and they could run it in there tough, and there were pockets of hell-raisers on defense, and Sam had enough working pieces in place to make it go.

These Browns? They're an artificial reef. The few working pieces aren't working. A 1-7 win-loss says so.

Once ... if ... the turnover bug gets cleared, Mangini has other headaches waiting in line. They're wrapped around the corner. They're lined up out the door.